Ether, according to our present conception of it, differing in its laws and influences from the atoms which constitute the world, and working among and above them, is perhaps only a grand myth like that of the imponderable, which has been exploded; that is, it is held to be a material entity, while it may be only another modification of the elementary matter in a state differing from the three already known to us; some of Crooke's late experiments on one condition of extremely gaseous matter leads to this assumption. The divided forces of matter, and the dualism which still survives, are also mythical conceptions. Although so much progress has been made in a rational direction, and truth is widely diffused, yet the old mythical instinct constantly reappears in some form or other. I must be permitted to say that this is an evident proof of the truth of my theory. Unless myth were due to an intrinsic psychical and organic law, it would not so persistently reappear. As soon as men are rationally conscious of this entifying faculty and its immediate effects on knowledge, the illusion will cease. Myth will be destroyed in every kind of facts and phenomena, and science, no longer the unconscious victim of this illusion, will advance with caution and assurance.
OF DREAMS, ILLUSIONS, NORMAL AND ABNORMAL HALLUCINATIONS, DELIRIUM, AND MADNESS--CONCLUSION.
In the preceding chapters, I have shown, as I believe, the genesis of myth, the fundamental faculty in which it necessarily originates, and its evolution in man, particularly in the Aryan and Semitic races. We have seen that the primitive and universal fact consists in the immediate and spontaneous entification of natural phenomena and of the ideas themselves; and we have resolved this fact into its elements, from which all the generating sources of myth issue, that is, from the immediate effects of the perception. Putting man out of the question, we ascertained that the same innate necessity was common to the animal kingdom.
In order to complete the theory, we must consider some other facts and psychical phenomena, both normal and abnormal, so as to ascertain whether these are not due to the same cause, as far as respects their intrinsic forms; namely, the belief in the reality of images seen in dreams, as well as in those which appear in illusions, in normal hallucinations of the senses, and in those which are abnormal, in ecstasy, in delirium, in madness, in idiocy, and dementia. In all these mental conditions, we ascribe a body and material existence to images which for various causes appear to be really presented to our senses.